Is Aspergers the opposite of psychopathy? What's our link?

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Since my twenties I've been aware of psychopaths and they of me. Some I've even loved. Mostly they hate my guts and hurt me. Once they get to know me.
What links us? I feel too much and they don't at all, I don't take chances and that's all they do. Is it that opposites attract, we're both outside looking in, some repellent trait we share, or what? Something's there.

Aspergers and Psychopathy, seeking your thoughts on perceived connections.

Aspies can be psychopaths and many have full blown psychosis.

Aspies are believed to be at a higher risk for mental illness as whole.

The point is anyone can be a psychopath, regardless of what else they suffer from.

I thought in a very simplified version: psychopaths understand people well but don't care about them, whereas autistic people don't understand people well but do care about them.
So basically, yeah, opposites. Truthfully I haven't put a lot of time into researching this though so I could be wrong.
(Obviously, the degree with which an autistic person "understands people" will vary as will the degree with which they care about people, but that's in general).

Please theorize broadly and at length WelcomeToHolland. Hell, I am. Open up.

You have not really said anything. Please theorize broadly and at length WelcomeToHolland. Hell, I am.
Open this discussion up so we learn.

I've heard that some people are born psychopaths, and I've also heard that it can be "developed" (which seems to be the case for many).

Really, anyone can be a psychopath. I've been there (as well as being pretty empathetic, actually). Not fun.

Psychopathy isn't having psychosis. It's having antisocial traits and then some. It's usually associated with antisocial personality disorder. These types of people don't care about harming others, they don't feel bad about hurting or manipulating other people and will do so for their own benefit. Some people hold the view that if it is caused biologically =psychopath or through experiences=sociopath. They lack emotional empathy (and much more) while people with autism do not lack emotional empathy. It is believed that those with autism lack cognitive empathy (being able to see things from another person's perspective which is different from feeling for someone when they're upset or hurt).
I can see how in a way it could be "opposite" of autism. They have a superficial charm about them and use it to win people over only to manipulate them later. In autism there is a struggle to interact which leads to a more genuine encounter with no intention of manipulating.
Psychopaths are evil.... I unfortunately knew one quite well only at the time I didn't realize it.

Psychopathy is a special interest of mine

Sine anti social personality disorder develops from environmental issues and isn't neurological in origin, it is different from psychopathy. MRI scans show that psychopaths brains are wired differently, much in the same way autistics' brains are wired differently.

I have thought too that psychopathy and autism are opposites. As a previous poster stated, manipulation and charm are skills of the psychopath that are oh so absent in aspires (usually). When you look at the traits of psychopathy on Dr Hare's PCLR, they tend to require skills typically absent in autistics so I have often thought that you wouldn't find clinical psychopathy (someone with a score of more than 30 on the PCLR) co-morbid with autism.

I am fascinated by the overlaps between autism and psychopathy ... There seems to be a disconnect from emotion, a flat affect and difficulties with empathy - though this latter one is caused by different reasons.

By the way, there's a heck of a lot of crap out there about psychopathy, even from people who ought to be in a position to know better. Some reliable experts I've discovered are Dr Robert Hare, kent Kiehl, Mary ellen o'toole and jim fallon.

In real life, the link that I have observed is that many ASD people (particularly women) unwittingly fall into relationships with people (particularly men) who have Narcissistic Personality Disorder (Cluster B) and remain naive for a long time about the motives of the NPDs and how they are being conned, manipulated and controlled for as long as they are useful to the NPD agenda. These psychopaths cause enormous damage to the naive non-psychopathic Aspergers partners who are used, abused, and when used up or no longer useful to the image or purposes of the NPDs, are dumped like old rubbish callously and brutally. For this reason I suggest that all ASD women looking for a relationship thoroughly examine the characteristics of cluster B narcissists (men too) and review their past relationship history in light of it.

I have a bit of crazy theory. I think sociopaths and psychopaths are not the insane ones as they are just following their nature. Society is the crazy one as it assumes many crazy lies and untruths to make itself run.

I know that it's common for autistic people to feel guilty over bad/negative occurrences when they're aware it wasn't even their fault at all. This sounds like the opposite of the way a sociopath/psychopath thinks in my opinion.

I think there's a lot in what you say. The common conception of autism=no empathy, even though many WP members see it as far more complex, overshadows the fact that the "man in the street" largely does not see nor care about the nuances we often discuss here, and completely misses the fact that people on the spectrum not only have capacities for feeling, compassion, empathy, but often possess them in an abundance, the love and concern for the well-being of animals being a particular example. There are many highly sensitive people on the spectrum who could not be further away, dimensionally, from psychopaths and sociopaths. However it must be added that p's and s's can also be found in any human variety, there are no doubt some autists who have sociopathic tendencies, though these are far more common in neurotypical populations in my experience, the sociopathic level of social cunning, calculation and indifference to other's suffering is seen in the media every day, though you will never the headline "neurotypical commits sociopathic act", the bias is to highlight neurostatus only when perpetrators are not "normative".